Story:The End of Eternity/E1
I Earth as a Home to Nothing “In the end I will watch the world be destroyed.” He stood with his hands in his pockets in the middle of the street, looking over to a nearby balcony on a hill that overlooked an uptown view of the massive city. The statement had come to him after hours of thought, but when he finally expressed this ideal the boy felt cleansed, like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Evening was beginning to fall. All around him people continued to walk, their heads down and their minds focused. None of them looked at him or spoke in response; they simply parted automatically to pass him by, wholly concentrated on the paths and jobs ahead of them. They ignored him so efficiently, so unconsciously, that they appeared as machines. Machines rushing off to work with machines, to live with machines, and to ensure the endless survival of machines. Arend Vitalis was tired of it all. He started to walk sideways through the crowd of people on the street, not bothering to look where he was going. The people would always pass him by, too focused to ever bump into him or yell. That was a waste of energy in a society focused only on survival and efficiency of resources. “I am tired of this wasteland, full of isolation, immorality, unjustifiable decisions, and inexcusable crimes.” Arend spoke again, his voice booming and pointed, but no one bothered to listen to him. Man and woman both all wore efficient gray suits tailored to their various jobs, and they rushed through the endless gray and black landscape of utilitarian civilization. Buildings and skyscrapers rose high in the sky, their visages prevented from being proud by their broken windows, their peeling paint, and the downtrodden people within them. The streets and sidewalks alike were paved in lifeless gray stone, uniform and unremarkable. “I am tired of this lifeless world.” Arend arrived at the balcony he had spotted and stood over it, his hands still resting firmly within his pockets. Benches and tables lay around him, empty and covered in soot and dust. No one had sat there since the creation of the city. Everyone was always too busy going to and fro jobs and home, their thoughts focused only on survival and efficiency. This was not the first time Arend had ever had such dark, nihilistic thoughts. He had felt different from everyone else in the world since he was just a child, when he had seen the world around him with innocent and sponge-like eyes and mind. No one was happy in this world. No one was full of life, beaming, or bursting with ambition. There was only work, and life, and sleep, and work again, forever and ever, until the end of time. The air was hot despite the oncoming evening, and a drop of sweat trickled down Arend’s side. It tickled, but he did not laugh. If anything, as he walked towards the railing on the small city balcony, his frown deepened, his eyes grew darker, and the bags under them deepened. He wanted to scream with all his lungs out into the evening air, but a disturbance of that magnitude would have definitely summoned some attention towards him. That was unnecessary. Instead, Arend stood at the very end of the balcony, his chest touching the faded golden railing, and he let the gentle winds blow his flaxen hair across his broad forehead. It was rare for the winds to blow here, and even rarer for there to be an open space free of life within any part of a city. Though if any place would be free in a city, it would be a place of leisure. “I speak so boldly of ending the world, but I can’t get past the idea of ending my own free time.” Arend’s frown deepened and let his resting hands curl into frustrated fists. “I’m just as bad as everyone else.” Arend was nineteen years old, with only one semester left in his school career before he would be considered an adult. Upon graduation, he would be drafted into the factory that his father worked in, and he would become one with the general population – an industry worker, little more than an insect, whose entire life would revolve around work. Creating household objects, crafting materials for indentured androids, the like… it was a boring life, but not necessarily an offensive one. At least, that is what Arend would have thought if his father worked in such a place. Instead his father was an engineer in the world’s facilities for nutritious survival. He and his family settled down in various cities for years at a time overseeing and working for the labs that syphoned resources and energy from the earth and transforming them into nutrients and energy sources that humans could use to live. In other words, in less than six months, Arend would be spending the rest of his life stealing from the Earth like a common parasite. “I won’t do it,” the boy growled for the thousandth time in the past year. “I refuse to let myself become a common, selfish insect!” “Then what else will you do?” Arend turned, his hands freeing themselves from his pockets and his eyes widening. No one had ever spoken back to him before, not when he was alone and drenched in his thoughts, but now he had heard a voice behind him that shocked him. Standing shoulder to shoulder some feet away stood two young adults, a boy and a girl, both of whom looked to be the same age as him. They looked alike and were of similar heights; along with their identical gray school uniforms, Arend could not see them as anything but twins. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” Arend frowned and narrowed his eyes with suspicion. If they were spies or informants for the city’s government, he could have been executed for skipping school that day and speaking rebellious thoughts. Arend mentally slapped himself for letting his guard down so obviously. “We mean to ask you the same thing.” The girl stepped forward with an amicable smile on her face. She was slim with straw-like brown hair, and her nose angled out prominently from her flat face. “I’m sorry if we bothered you, but we couldn’t help but overhear what you were saying over there as you looked over that beautiful view of the city.” “You seem like you’ve been here before,” the boy said, with the same smile and relaxed posture as his sister. “Would it be too much trouble to ask you to give us a tour of the city? We’re new here, if you haven’t noticed.” With a shrug, the boy started to pick at his teeth as he looked up to Arend. Arend gave them no immediate answer, but instead kept his suspicious stance the same as he looked them both over. “You have me mistaken,” he said after a moment before rising to his full height and returning his hands to his pockets. “I only arrived here a week ago. I’m just as new as you are.” “Is that really true?” the girl asked, her eyebrows saddened as she pulled at a strand of her hair. “Please, sir, we just want to see a bit of the city we’re going to be living in for the rest of our lives. Won’t you help?” She looked up to him at the same time that her brother did, and for a moment – caught in the intensity of their shared glances – Arend noticed a knowledgeable twinkle in their eyes. He felt his stomach churn nervously, and he realized that it would be easier to indulge in the request of the two in order to get them off his back faster. He bit his bottom lip and sighed. “It’s Arend Vitalis. Not “sir”. Come on. If you can’t keep up, I’m leaving you two behind.” They walked after Arend as he immersed himself once more in the unending bustle of the decaying city. Although they were silent and close enough to him that he never lost sight of his two accomplices, Arend felt himself growing more and more uneasy around them. His mood only continued to fall. As if sensing his disturbed mood, the brother walked up to Arend’s side and smirked before speaking. “We heard everything you said… and we’d like to hear more.” The boy in the gray suit felt his heart sink into his stomach. “You don’t have to worry about anything,” the girl said as she joined her brother next to Arend’s side. “We really are just interested. Something about your determination is really fascinating.” “Did you really hear what I said?” Arend asked harshly. He looked both of them over with his same wild, disturbed gaze, as if measuring their strength. “I want the world to end. The society we live in now is disgusting, soulless, and worthless. Humanity has amounted to nothing more than slugs searching for life in dead mounds of dirt.” “Yes. That’s what we heard.” The boy sighed and looked up to the darkening skies with a smile. “It’s refreshing to hear that, you know. For as long as I can remember, everything has been about life and work. Factories and engineering. Where’s the color in this world? Can’t we do anything besides go to the same job every day for the rest of our lives? Doesn’t anyone else want anything more than that?!” Arend said nothing in response. He wondered if they were actually listening to what he had to say, or if they even heard him at all. Just as always, the people in the crowded streets of the nameless city walked past the three and spared them no looks or ears, as if they were never there in the first place. “How did you come to these conclusions?” inquired the girl, her eyes tirelessly wandering over the dismal skies of the horizon. “Thought. Observations. Books.” “Books? Where did you ever get one of those? I’ve only ever seen a handful in school!” The boy looked to Arend with an excited, bright smile, so enthusiastic that it was almost bewildering. “My father works for the nutrition facilities. Sometimes he brings home books and theoretical manuals on the fields. I’ve been reading them for as long as I can remember.” “You even learned how to read outside of school? Oh man, what a life! Why haven’t we met you sooner?!” Again Arend said nothing. He only looked down and frowned, his eyes narrowed and focused in heavy introspective thought. The ‘tour’ continued well into the night. As the trio went in and out of various abandoned factories, houses, and warehouses, the two would ask Arend questions about his life and the things he did in his free time. For the most part they did not bother to ask him about the goals they overheard once the tour started; unprompted, Arend did not speak much of them. He was a wanderer and a thinker, not a talker, and as he showed the two siblings the various empty places he had wandered to in the city, he stood in the shadows with hands withdrawn to his pockets. There was only one place left that Arend drifted to, and by this time of night it was likely winding down in activity. The streets as well had diminished in movement, and the three were able to walk side by side without coming into contact with many other people. Arend still walked silently, even as the two siblings talked to each and engaged in small talk. He was not at ease with them at all, not even after hours of wandering together throughout the lifeless city. The darkness in the air only seemed to magnify the issue. Shadows lengthened, shy winds blew, shattered windows played with reflections of the three outcasts, and no moon or stars in the skies brightened the dreary atmosphere of umbrage. “Here we are,” Arend announced without fanfare. “My final sanctuary. The household android factory that my mother works at. When she leaves at sunset, most of the other workers leave with her, and all that is left is shadows and cold, obedient, and empty bodies.” “A little heavy-handed,” the boy said with his favored one-sided smile, “But it is believable. You think this to be the state of mankind as well – don’t you?” Arend was silent. “It’s really so quiet in here,” the girl whispered fragilely. She was the first to walk into the open doors of the tall factory, her eyes so curious that they seemed to be lanterns within. “It really does fit you, Arend!” “I suppose it does –” “So can you speak freely here?” This was enough to bring Arend pause. He looked over at the two siblings, who had spoken at the same time and both looked at him with piercing eyes of innocent curiosity. This must have been their plan all along – to stall for the arrival of night, to get Arend to lead them to a place of solitude, and to hear the true depths of Arend’s inhumane ideals. The boy in gray took his hands out of his pockets and smiled. “You have seen the extent of this city with me,” he started, “and if you have seen this city, you have seen them all. My family and I have been traveling before I was born. We have been to cities all around this rotten, decrepit world. They are all the same. Everyone speaks one language and performs one job; everyone looks the same; everyone wants only to blaze into the ever efficient future. No one has any different opinions. No one has any different stories to tell. Every book is written in the same dull, informative tone. Every factory is filled with ignorant insects. And for what? Why do we live, why do we exist, but to simply continue this existence? What are we contributing? What are we amounting to?!” The siblings looked to Arend with interested, hungry eyes. They could not answer any of his rhetorical questions, both because of ignorance and because they were too focused on the increasing animation of his speech. As he spoke, Arend walked around the dark floor of the factory, gesturing to the abandoned machinery and fallen parts of androids around them. With a flourish, Arend opened his uniform’s blazer and pressed a button on a console near the opening of the factory’s main floor. With a churning noise not unlike clockwork, machines started to grind to life and a small amount of lights flickered on inside the warehouse. Gone was Arend’s feeling of quiet thought and unease. Now that the two mysterious siblings had trapped him in a place where he could express himself freely, the boy took this opportunity and ran with it. “The planet is too much with us, and too little without us. We are the only living things here. We only live because we are parasites who suck the livelihood from the planet. My father has been a part of this deplorable industry for all his life, and soon, I will join him in the task. But I will not work all my life until old age like he will… because this world will end before that.” Now, finally, the siblings were able to react and speak. “So are you going to end the world?” the boy said, as speculative as usual. “Or is it going to happen on its own?” “What happens to everyone when it does end?” his sister asked, her hands brushing through her straight hair. “Why do you simply want to watch the world end? Why not end it yourself?” “How do you know about this fate?” “Why do you think our existence is bad?” They only stopped inquiring once Arend turned around and glared at them both with blazing, hungry eyes. He stood with the fierceness of an animal trapped in a corner, and all around him the hum of automated machinery populated the empty factory. “I know this will happen in my lifetime because of two reasons. Firstly, I have studied much of my father’s work, and I have seen him go to work longer and longer as I have grown older. His job is becoming more difficult as usable resources in the earth grow scarce. As of late, he has been studying how to prolong this inevitable fate and how to eke out enough resources to feed the billions of people on the planet. But he cannot stop scarcity, and he cannot slow the blighted growth of mankind. And secondly,” Arend added with a frenzy so depraved that it bordered on grotesque, “I know it is my destiny to see the world end, and I refuse not to let it happen. Our sins must be absolved… and I must watch it happen. I cannot cause it myself… I don’t have the power for that. I barely have the power to free myself from this twisted society of ours. So I will stay within it, and I will continue to hate until the end comes – and then I will relish in it, even if I have to wait an eternity.” The siblings stood in unmoving silence for a long, long time. They both looked onto Arend, and both of their dull hazel eyes searched his body and his mind for any source of weakness, but were unable to find any. By all accounts, Arend Vitalis was just an ordinary boy two steps from becoming an independent adult. His uniform gray suit was pressed and ironed pristinely. His hair was a bit long, but clearly taken care of. His ideals were just as cleanly taken care of and prepared as his clothes were; besides the radical nature of them, the ideas that Arend spoke of were realistic and not ridiculous enough for the two to take apart. If anything, they were taken aback by the passion that he put into his predictions; from the wild and powerful look in his eyes, the two siblings could tell that Arend was dead serious about what he spoke of, and that he had indeed come to these conclusions after days of deep introspection. They said nothing, out of fear that if they opened their mouths, they would have no choice but to agree with what Arend was preaching. He sensed their hesitance and awe, and a disjointed, self-satisfied smile crept on his lips. “It didn’t take long for me to figure out that you were just like me,” he whispered, letting his hands return to his pockets once again. Arend turned around, speaking just as loud and passionately even as his eyes looked down to peruse the moving conveyor belts and machine units around him. “You’ve seen it too, haven’t you? That we are all sinners. That this world of ours is flawed, corrupt, and stale. There is no more rain on this planet, no snow, no greenery, and no life. There is only humanity and its mistakes. Do you really think this is how we’re supposed to live?” “How did this happen?” the boy asked, his eyes low and wide with surprise. “When did we get like this?” His sister looked over to him, her eyes equally troubled. She was not sure if he meant the situation that Arend spoke of or the mental state of the siblings in general. “It was the Collapse,” Arend whispered. “You probably don’t remember it, but the schools taught us about it when we are just children. It’s the first thing we learn, and the first thing everyone stops talking about. Do you know why?” “We did it,” whispered the girl. She had started to shiver, though the air was still as unmoving and stuffy as it always was. “Humans caused the Collapse. Humans destroyed the earth.” “That’s right,” Arend said, his own voice lowering as well. He started to walk down the path of a conveyor belt into the grinding darkness of the inner factory, and both the siblings followed him, mindlessly. By now they were almost enslaved to what he was saying. The trap had backfired. “It was war,” Arend added, almost absentmindedly. “No natural catastrophe could have scarred this planet so. No natural disaster would have wiped out every other living thing in the seas and on the earth, only to leave mankind alive. No, we did this all on our own, and in order to keep ourselves in check, we focused all of our efforts on simple survival and creation, so that we may repopulate the earth with soulless husks in our image.” “But it happened so long ago,” the boy said. He seemed more withdrawn than usual, and he held his head low, as if in supplication. “No one alive has any memory of what the world was before now, but now there are no wars. No destruction, no suffering… our world is perfect. Boring, but perfect.” “It is perfect,” his sister agreed, “Everyone has a purpose, and no one wants for anything.” “But does it lack suffering? Does it really?” Arend’s nose was raised in the air and he looked down on the two. Suddenly the air around him seemed heavy and he appeared larger-than-life, so knowledgeable and powerful that he towered over the brother and sister. Drunk on his self-righteous words and beliefs, Arend rose to life like the shrunken, half-starved body of a once-mighty beast, presiding over his high perch and laughing at the inferior prey looking up at his apathetic form. Instinctively, his prey stepped backwards. “That sounds like the ultimate in selfishness to me. Just because humanity has choked itself free of any sort of disagreement and strife – just because we are free of everything else in our way in this world – you say we have gotten rid of suffering and pain? Is it not suffering to simply exist in such a gray, soulless world?” He lowered his head and closed his eyes as if in pain. “That is the problem with this world of ours. It is lacking in color… and life.” “We live, though. And we continue to live. Isn’t that right?” The boy looked almost distressed now, and Arend only seemed to become more energetic as his listeners fell apart within his discussion. “Weren’t we created to live?” “Can this even be called living?” “Humanity has done so much,” the girl whispered after Arend silenced her sibling, her hands crossed across her small-sized chest. She looked most withdrawn of all, ruinous even, and her scrunched up face gave her the impression of being a caricature of a terrified rat. “Isn’t it a wonder that we have done so much on an otherwise unwelcoming world?” For every question they had, Arend had an answer – for he had gone through these same hopeless discussions with himself for years now. “But were we the only things created on this earth? Who was it that made the planet so unwelcoming?” He smiled darkly. “That’s right. Humans. So this is where I came up with my ideals… this is how I came to the conclusion that humanity has to end before the world can prosper. It is the only way for us to absolve ourselves of our most critical sins. We commit so many, but the most horrid one is existence itself…” The young adult trailed off in his speech as he reached up to a vertical conveyor belt beside him. With the speed of a snake, Arend picked off a component of an android from the quickly moving belt of machinery, and held it in front of him with admiration. The human-sized empty skull of a house-model robot lay in his hand, eyeless, toothless, and mindless. “So tell me,” Arend finally added, all hints of amusement melting away, “I’m right, aren’t I?” Before they could say anything in response, both nameless siblings looked off into the dark ends of the factory in fear. They looked shaken, more than ever before, and within their eyes twinkled true dread. Alarmingly, they glanced over to Arend and clung to each other. “Did you hear that?” they whispered, at the same time. “Hear what?” The boy looked over to them in alarm, his hand still cradling the skull painted the color of curdled milk. “There’s nothing else here but you and I. None of the androids here are ever activated – they’re not even fully operational yet.” The girl screamed and fell to her knees with trembling hands cupped over her ears. “Who is that?! That voice – it’s so horrid! So disgusting! Make it stop – please, brother, make it stop!” But her brother was not much better off. Though he stood still, and his arms were still cradled around his sister’s biceps, he withered and wasted away within his baggy uniform. “Who is that?” he whispered, his voice shaking as hard as he was. “Whose voice could that possibly be? Why is it asking us these questions?” “No! I don’t know – I don’t know! Please, don’t anymore! I’m sorry! I don’t know the answers! Please!” “S-stop… Stop it!” The quivering boy’s eyes looked up to the dark ceiling above him as he slowly sank to his knees besides his sister. The two hugged and started to openly sob, and now both of their fingers forcefully jabbed into the holes of their ears, desperate to stop whatever it was they were hearing. The sound of them ripping apart their auditory organs was wet and slick with blood, chilling enough to send cold waves rolling down Arend’s spine. The boy could do nothing but stand where he was, eyes wide and his brow sewn in confusion. “Wha… what is wrong with you? Who is speaking to you? Is… Is this a joke?” He could do nothing but watch the two siblings writhing in their agony as they shook over each other and, without hesitance, mutilate their own ears. He had never seen such horrible terror and despair in anyone before, not even when he was telling them about the apocalypse and his own nihilistic wishes. But most troubling was the fact that they seemed to be anguished by some voice asking them something, and all the factory was quiet. He noticed, with rising anxiety of his own, that the factory was too quiet. Most of the lights had dimmed, if not turned themselves off; all of the machinery had suddenly stopped short; the air had stilled, as fragile and unmoving as glass; even the skull in his hand seemed to freeze, and it felt cold within his hands. The boy looked over to Arend with eyes so full of fear that they looked as if they would overflow; and overflow they did, with bountiful off-white tears. “Why can I still hear her?” he asked. “Why won’t her voice go away?” “We have no answers,” the girl wailed. “Why isn’t she asking you? Why did we come here? How are we to decide?” Arend could do and say nothing, even as he recoiled onto the conveyor belt behind him and dropped the skull from his grip. Both siblings looked to him now, as if in resignation, their disfigured ear canals dangling from their ruined earlobes. Blood ran down the side of their faces and necks like rivers, twisting and making chilling intimacy with the pure white of their clothes. They looked so lonely, there, and the shadows of machinery tip-toed around them ravenously. Just as soon as they had descended into aggrieved madness, the two siblings perked up and looked immediately peaceful. They looked at each other and smiled before standing up. “Where are you going?” Arend asked, alarmed and disturbed. “We should leave. Come, let’s go!” “No,” they answered in perfect unison, “She calls for us. Our end beckons.” They had ripped out their ears – it was impossible for them to hear what Arend was saying, let alone this mysterious inquisitor they were so shaken by, but both still spoke in harmony and in response to Arend’s words. Blood fell to the floor quietly as they held hands, their bloody phalanges mixing and melting together in the darkness. As they turned to the shadows behind them, their gray suits seemed to darken and bleed together with atmospheric umbra. “Your end?! Wait… What are you –” “Arend – does humanity deserve salvation?” He looked at them for a long time, unable to move or think. They could not hear him, but he felt a need to respond anyway. He owed it to them. “No,” he finally answered, pulsating like a heart of darkness. Both of them nodded with satisfaction, and they spoke together with a smile and closed, restful eyes. “That is what she said, as well.” With that, they disappeared into the drowning depths of shadow. As soon as the two siblings retreated into the darkness, Arend lost sight of their figures, like they had instantly been erased from existence. The terrible stillness that had taken hold of the air vanished. All the world resumed as if the siblings had never been in the first place, and both lights and sound slowly returned to the factory floor. All that was left was blood on the floor from the self-mutilation of the twins of suffering. Arend was convinced that he had been dreaming, and that everything he had seen and heard in the factory was the throng of a horrid nightmare – that is, until he saw the blood remaining on the floor. Then Arend became completely sure that this was reality, and two people he had taken time to respect and speak to had vanished, like specters. He felt that he would never forget that look of pure horror in their eyes – as well as the look of pure peace that had glistened from their anguished faces right before they sought death. For he was also sure that they were dead, and that he would never meet another person or group of people who would be willing to watch the world end with him. Next ->